To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many children (a) entered and (b) left immigration detention between April and December 2009; and how many of those who left detention in that period were (i) deported and (ii) released.

Published management information indicates that 830 children entered detention solely under Immigration Act powers between April and December 2009 and 860 children left detention held solely under Immigration Act powers during the same period. Within these statistics, it is not possible to separately identify how many of the children were removed from the UK or released upon leaving detention. However, published National Statistics indicate that a total of 415 children were removed from the UK upon leaving detention solely under Immigration Act powers in the same period. As usual, figures are provisional and are rounded to the nearest five. Children are those individuals recorded as being under 18 years of age at the start and the end of their period of detention respectively and may have been detained more than once during that time.

This information has been extracted from the text and the tables of the Control of Immigration: Quarterly Statistical Summary, United Kingdom-2nd to 4th Quarter 2009 publications which are available from the Home Office's Research, Development and Statistics website at:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigration-asylum-stats.html